Therukoothu – Draupadi Vastraharanam
Tamil Nadu, India – Street theatre dramatizing Draupadi’s disrobing from the Mahabharata
Thinking Through Michel Foucault (1926-1984)’s Philosophy on the Art Essence
“Resistance and the Ethics of Exposure”
1. Truth and Embodiment in Public Spaces
Therukoothu—“street theatre”—dismantles the stage, bringing performance directly into the community. In Draupadi Vastraharanam, the myth of Draupadi’s public humiliation in the royal court is restaged in the streets, thus producing a collective confrontation with the ethics of power, gender, and voice. Foucault's emphasis on technologies of the self—the practices through which individuals constitute themselves as ethical beings—resonates deeply here: Draupadi refuses silence and constructs herself as an agent of resistance through her public invocation of dharma.
By transforming the viewer’s street into the site of a woman’s vulnerability and strength, the performance reconfigures the relationship between body and truth. The disrobing—or rather the miracle of infinite garments—is not just a plot device, but a performative resistance: the refusal of the body to be owned, commodified, or exposed without consent. Draupadi's defiance becomes a care of the self, an insistence on ethical subjectivity in the face of sovereign injustice.
2. Theatrics as Parrhesia (Courageous Speech)
Foucault’s concept of parrhesia, or fearless truth-telling, is embodied in Draupadi's voice. Her cries to Krishna, her condemnation of the silence of elders, and her refusal to be shamed are not just narrative moments—they are acts of ethical declaration. In Therukoothu, these scenes are often screamed, wailed, sung in full emotional fury, forcing the audience to reckon not with an abstract virtue, but with the lived terror of systemic violation.
Unlike polite discourse, Therukoothu’s raw sonic palette—drums, cymbals, raspy vocals—creates an auditory politics of intensity. Here, truth is not what is said, but what ruptures the normalcy of silence.
3. Gendered Power and Counter-Conduct
Foucault's late work encourages us to explore resistance not as revolution, but as counter-conduct—practices that refuse dominant regimes of knowledge. Draupadi's stand is such a moment: she neither fights nor flees. Instead, she invokes cosmic law while standing still, transforming the space around her into a sacred protest. Therukoothu actors embody this stillness amidst chaos, exaggerating gesture and gaze, creating dramatic pause that suspends time—a theatrical tactic of sovereign interruption.
The stage is not the palace—it is the dirt road. And yet, in this displacement lies its radicality: by lifting courtly drama into a community square, Therukoothu displaces power and asserts folk ethics as sovereign law.